May 14th, 2009 / 4:12 pm
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Justin Taylor
Uncategorized
Something Baffling, Something Bloom: In which I follow H.B.’s advice and start reading Kafka’s Blue Octavo Notebooks
February 19, 1917.
Today read Hermann und Dorothea, passages from Richter’s Memoirs, looked at pictures by him, and finally read a scene from Hauptmann’s Griselda. For the brief span of the next hour am a different person. True, all prospects as misty as ever, but pictures in the mist now different. The man in heavy boots I have put on today for the first time (they were originally intended for military service) is a different person.
–The First Notebook
Tags: Harold Bloom, Kafka
What’s with the bloom fetish?
What’s with the bloom fetish?
Wonderful fetish, richly deserving of canonization for ‘The Anxiety of Influence’ alone. Art changes us, as it phenomenally imprints on us literally like a trauma. As we gain experience with the complex mix of life, our perception is our worlding. The broadness of it, descriptions of how it may happen, how experience may be had, can be said again and again, made to happen, may be recognized, re-presented.
Bloom, blooms.The Book of J. is great too.
Wonderful fetish, richly deserving of canonization for ‘The Anxiety of Influence’ alone. Art changes us, as it phenomenally imprints on us literally like a trauma. As we gain experience with the complex mix of life, our perception is our worlding. The broadness of it, descriptions of how it may happen, how experience may be had, can be said again and again, made to happen, may be recognized, re-presented.
Bloom, blooms.The Book of J. is great too.
Bloom fetish? Those are two words that should not go together.
Bloom fetish? Those are two words that should not go together.
And the Blue Octavo Notebooks are kindred to Bloom’s pursuits. So is the quote. The rarity of aesthetic conditioning is startling.
And the Blue Octavo Notebooks are kindred to Bloom’s pursuits. So is the quote. The rarity of aesthetic conditioning is startling.
There’s so much bloom quoting going on is all. And i have to disagree re the anxiety of influence. Susan M Schultz’s chapter on the relationship between Bloom and Ashbery in “A Poetics of Impasse in Modern and Contemporary American Poetry” is very good.
Bloom’s hard-line constructivism just rubs me the wrong way, as do his rhetorical flourishes.
For Kafka criticism i’d rather go for Benjamin, or Delueze and Guatarri.
There’s so much bloom quoting going on is all. And i have to disagree re the anxiety of influence. Susan M Schultz’s chapter on the relationship between Bloom and Ashbery in “A Poetics of Impasse in Modern and Contemporary American Poetry” is very good.
Bloom’s hard-line constructivism just rubs me the wrong way, as do his rhetorical flourishes.
For Kafka criticism i’d rather go for Benjamin, or Delueze and Guatarri.
Ross, the Bloom-ophilia is pretty much all mine. I’ve just been on a kick lately. I’d actually be really interested to read some great criticism of Bloom. I’ll see if I can find that Schultz chapter.
Ross, the Bloom-ophilia is pretty much all mine. I’ve just been on a kick lately. I’d actually be really interested to read some great criticism of Bloom. I’ll see if I can find that Schultz chapter.
There’s a line in the notebooks I used to quote: “When shall I become, through my animal, my inheritance?”
Reread recently and turned out it was: “What shall I become through my animal, my inheritance?”
Which is a wholly dif. question. The entire paragraph (which opens the 2nd notebook) runs:
A little boy had a cat that was all he had inherited from his father and through it became Lord Mayor of London. What shall I become through my animal, my inheritance? Where does the huge city lie?
What a wonderful book. Well-designed, too. Looked it up just now and turns out the current publisher, Exact Change Books, is that of Damon and Naomi, of Galaxie 500, and also Damon & Naomi.
Rock!
There’s a line in the notebooks I used to quote: “When shall I become, through my animal, my inheritance?”
Reread recently and turned out it was: “What shall I become through my animal, my inheritance?”
Which is a wholly dif. question. The entire paragraph (which opens the 2nd notebook) runs:
A little boy had a cat that was all he had inherited from his father and through it became Lord Mayor of London. What shall I become through my animal, my inheritance? Where does the huge city lie?
What a wonderful book. Well-designed, too. Looked it up just now and turns out the current publisher, Exact Change Books, is that of Damon and Naomi, of Galaxie 500, and also Damon & Naomi.
Rock!